La Liga 2026-27 preview: Madrid look to Mourinho in bid to dethrone Barcelona

A lot has changed since José Mourinho was last appointed Real Madrid manager, but a lot has also not changed. Before his first game in charge in 2010, Spain had just become world champions, their extra-time winner in the final scored by a Barcelona player after their opponents, who had been reduced to 10 men, had tried to kick them off the park. Like then, Mourinho’s task is to take down a Barcelona team that have won two La Liga titles in succession. And like then, he has a host of world-class talent at his disposal.

Florentino Pérez is also still around – and he is largely the reason why Mourinho is back. After the chief executive, José Ángel Sánchez, was said to have led the charge to appoint Xabi Alonso last summer, the 79-year-old club president has made the decision his own this time. He promised Mourinho, who won La Liga with 100 points in his first spell, would return if he was re-elected in snap elections in June and the announcement came, in true Pérez style, on the opening day of the World Cup.

Jorge Valdano, the former Madrid player and manager who worked upstairs during Mourinho’s first tenure, was of the opinion that a lot has indeed changed since then. “Almost 15 years have passed: football is no longer the same, society is not the same, Florentino is no longer the same, and Mourinho certainly won’t be either,” he told A Bola.

But Mourinho was the outstanding law-and-order candidate. Even after Alonso’s sacking last January, Madrid’s season continued its descent into chaos under Álvaro Arbeloa. In May, Federico Valverde was taken to hospital for stitches after a bust-up with his teammate Aurélien Tchouaméni. A few days later, Madrid conceded the league title in the clásico and would finish the campaign trophyless. By then an online petition calling for Kylian Mbappé to leave had reached 30 million signatures. Speculation about the future of Vinícius Júnior, who had 12 months left on his contract, would not go away.

Not everything has gone right since – a £129m bid for Julián Álvarez was turned down by Atlético Madrid, while Barcelona look more likely to sign Rodri from Manchester City – but Madrid’s preparations for the new campaign have exuded an air of calm. Mourinho began work a month before his contract started and has not had an official unveiling in front of the media. “It’s not about working at Real Madrid, it is working for Real Madrid,” he said sternly in a short in-house interview at the start of pre-season. The soundbites are limited to his new Netflix documentary. There has been no globetrotting summer tour either; just a series of low-key friendlies across Europe.

Perhaps most importantly, after all that Arsenal talk, Vinícius has signed a new six-year deal. “Vinícius has become one of the most important players in one of the most successful periods in our history,” the club said. Mourinho will have to find a system that gets the best out of him, Mbappé and Jude Bellingham, not to mention a new galáctico, the £115m winger Yan Diomandé, who was playing across town for Leganés B in Spain’s fifth tier only last year.

Diomandé made his Leganés first-team debut at the Bernabéu in March 2025. “Who makes their debut at 18 against Real Madrid? It was a dream. And then it was a nightmare,” Diomandé wrote in the Players’ Tribune this summer, while he was shining for Côte d’Ivoire at the World Cup, in a raw and emotional article dedicated to his sister Roxane, who died aged 15 after her drink was spiked at a party, just weeks after her brother’s La Liga debut.

Supporting Diomandé and Vinícius down the left wing will be Marc Cucurella who, along with Bernardo Silva, Ibrahima Konaté, Denzel Dumfries and the 6ft 4in striker Carlos Espí, are all signings that should adapt easily to Mourinho’s coaching. But of all the star quality on the pitch, it is the Portuguese coach who will attract the most attention.

By landing the Real Madrid job again, Mourinho has staged a comeback few expected after his later struggles in the Premier League and a tour of Europe that delivered mixed results. His orchestrating of Benfica’s remarkable Champions League escape against Madrid last season, with the goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin’s late goal, thrust him back into the spotlight. But his disappointing comments after Vinícius accused Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni of racist abuse – Prestianni was ultimately banned by Uefa for “homophobic conduct” – were criticised by Kick It Out as “a form of gaslighting”. “Mourinho is Mourinho,” said Arbeloa.

After returning for pre-season, Vinícius said: “It has gone very well, getting to know the new coach … Mourinho wants me to be as I have always been: happy, cheerful and playing my football.” There has been no suggestion of any lingering bad blood.

It is not only Mourinho who is returning to La Liga after a lengthy absence. Racing Santander are back for the first time since 2012 and have welcomed back one of their own in Sergio Canales, now 35, who left aged 19 to join Mourinho’s Real Madrid in that summer of 2010. “I’m still struggling to believe this is real,” the midfielder said last month. Deportivo and Málaga also return to La Liga for the first time since 2018 having both dropped to the third tier in that time. Depor’s marquee signing has been a 37-year-old Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

Diego Simeone, beginning his 15th full season in charge of Atlético, reunites with Mourinho in the dugout for the Madrid derby. Atlético have started life after Antoine Griezmann with investment in their squad that has included signing Lee Kang-in from Paris Saint-Germain and giving him Griezmann’s No 7 shirt. Manuel Pellegrini, Mourinho’s predecessor in his first spell at the Bernabéu, remains in charge of Real Betis while Villarreal, the other of Spain’s five clubs in the Champions League this season, have appointed Iñigo Pérez after his feats at Rayo Vallecano.

Pellegrino Matarazzo, the American in charge of Real Sociedad, will be looking to build on the club’s Copa del Rey triumph in April. The other hotseat in the Basque Country, at Athletic Club, is occupied by a German for the first time since Jupp Heynckes in 2003. “Athletic is the only club where a handshake is more important than a signature,” Heynckes told the new man, Edin Terzic, before he took the job.

It is Barcelona, though, who remain favourites for the title. Like Griezmann, Robert Lewandowski has departed for Major League Soccer in the US, and there is still a gap up front while Atlético stand firm on Álvarez. Anthony Gordon has replaced Marcus Rashford to fight for a place with the injury-prone Raphinha on the left wing, but, with respect to Karim Adeyemi, there is no real competition on the other flank. Lamine Yamal did not take the World Cup by storm as many expected but he has returned from America as a world champion and, let’s remember, a 19-year-old. He will probably be the ringleader once more if Hansi Flick is to match Pep Guardiola’s achievement of three successive league titles. The first clásico is at the Camp Nou at the end of October.

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